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Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

Here's the meat of the story:

> Asking for credit-card information within Windows isn’t that startling, as you’ve probably already entered payment information into the Microsoft ecosystem either for buying apps or movies on the Microsoft Store app or for making similar purchases via your Xbox. Still, those transactions are normally performed via your Microsoft Account web page, which manages all of that online and behind the scenes.

The main difference being that instead of a browser interfacing your Microsoft Account, there's a Settings interface for the same information.

What I would really like is some compare/contrast with alternative operating systems. We know how this works in Windows before this change. Does macOS have any way to manage your Apple Account payment information through settings, or do you have to go to a web page? How about iOS and Android?

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On macOS, there's a prominent top banner in 'System Preferences' for 'Apple ID, iCloud, Meida & App Store', where if you click the 'Apple ID' button there, you are then one click away from a button labeled 'Payment & Shipping'.

A similar UI exists on iOS. Android is a little different in that the 'Google' option in Settings is a bit hidden on Google reference devices and OEMs get to customize the main app, too.

This is very much par for the course.

I think the difference here is Microsoft's client security story has been universally a hellscape so no one trusts it.

On Android the Google Play store app has a "Payments & subscriptions" screen which allows you to add, remove and select payment options.

Yeah, from the headline I thought that the credit card was mandatory for access to the test build or something. But it's just allowing you to (voluntarily) save credit card info for making purchases in the App Store, similar to how Android and Apple devices do it.

> as you’ve probably already entered payment information into the Microsoft ecosystem either for buying apps or movies on the Microsoft Store app or for making similar purchases via your Xbox.

Is this really that common? I've never interacted (directly) with the Microsoft "ecosystem" in my whole life, and I've been a Windows user that entire time. If I was going to purchase a movie or an "app", the Microsoft store is not the place I would go.

Of course it will vary per consumer.

Cases where this might happen:

- buying Office or having a personal/family Office 365 subscription

- XBox gaming / entertainment

- buying (other) software or devices from Microsoft

Less common might be using Microsoft for laptop movie purchases. And once upon a time the XBox Music / Groove was actually a really nice service for the price. Not sure if that still exists or what name it has now? (Edit: Looks like it's sort of still around, but evolving - https://www.windowscentral.com/goodbye-groove-music-new-medi... )

I also used to have a Windows Phone, but... that is NOT COMMON. Ha!

Apple uses a central point of entry - your Apple account, and it often requires you re-enter your password to revalidate who your are and will explicitly validate that you want to "really": buy (which you can suppress - I've never done that).

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